1. Organ Sales and Moral Travails: Lessons from the Living Kidney Vendor Program in Iran
- Author:
- Benjamin E. Hippen
- Publication Date:
- 03-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Kidney transplantation in the United States is burdened by a terrible policy failure. The cost of this failure will be paid in the currency of years of human lives unnecessarily lost, as well as a massive increase in federal expenditures over the next decade and beyond. The number of patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in the United States has grown, but the supply of kidneys—for the preferred treatment for ESRD, kidney transplantation— has not kept pace with the demand. Unfortunately, the issue is not simply one of supply and demand: in the United States the supply of kidneys for transplantation is kept artificially low by a prohibition on the sale of human organs.
- Topic:
- Health, Human Welfare, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iran, and Middle East